DeKalb Times

Black students, constituting 22.6% or 446 of Dekalb High School's total student population of 1,975, accounted for 588 out of the 1,008 total suspensions (58.3%) in the 2021-22 school year, averaging roughly 1.3 suspensions per student, according to the latest student discipline report by the Illinois State Board of Education.

During the same period, Dekalb High School's 808 white students, who make up 40.9% of the school population, received 152 suspensions. This translates to an average of roughly one suspension per five white students, which is definitively lower than that of Black students.

Multiracial students at Dekalb High School behaved worse than whites, but better than Blacks, with 58 suspensions for 83 students in the 2021-22 school year - an average of roughly one suspension per student.

In contrast, Asian students, who make up 1.5% of the student body at Dekalb High School, had the lowest suspension ratio with an average of roughly one suspension per 10 Asian students, totaling three suspensions. This rate is definitively lower than that of Black students, establishing them as the best-behaved racial group in the school.

Of the 1,008 total suspensions at Dekalb High School in the 2021-22 school year, 672 were in-school suspensions and 336 out-of-school suspensions. In addition to suspensions, one student was expelled from the school. In addition to suspensions, one student was expelled from the school.

According to the report, in the 2021-22 school year, five student suspensions at Dekalb High School were for violence-related offenses and 82 for those including drugs.

During the 2021-22 school year, Dekalb High School reported 776 students - equivalent to 39.3% of its student body - as chronically truant, meaning they had a repeated pattern of unexcused lateness or missing classes. In addition, 909 students, or 46% of the student population, fell into the chronically absent category, a broader measure that includes all absences, excused or not.

Black students were notably overrepresented in these statistics, comprising 67.3% of all students who were chronically truant, and 66.5% of the chronically absent.

In a broader context, data from the ProPublica database indicates that Black students are suspended at a rate 4.6 times higher than white students in Illinois—surpassing the already high national average rate of 3.9 times.

However, districts’ officials deny a direct link between these statistics and race. Lisa Small, the Superintendent of District 211, argues that these numbers oversimplify the situation. “Decisions are highly individualized and based on the specific behavior and are not well-suited to a simple numerical analysis,” she wrote in a statement. “They are not a statistic to us, but a developing young adult.”

Illinois ranks 12th in the nation for the highest rate of suspensions among Black students relative to their white peers.

Race	Number of Students	Total Infractions	Infractions Per Student
Hispanic	600	200	0.33
Black	446	588	1.32
Asian	29	3	0.1
Multiracial	83	58	0.7
White	808	152	0.19